Influence of Environmental Perception on Place Attachment in Romanian Rural Areas

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This scholarly investigation scrutinizes facets of place attachment within rural settings, a constituent of social cohesion that dictates attitudinal and behavioral propensities in fostering a harmonious interplay between humanity and its physical environment. An elevated degree of place attachment engenders efficacious behavioral paradigms aimed at ameliorating issues stemming from pollution and the deterioration of natural environments. Thus, the authors set an objective to gauge the manifestations of place attachment in rural Romania and delineate initiatives conducive to amplifying this process. They embarked upon an exploration of causality between environmental perception and place attachment. Employing a survey approach, we sought to discern the various manifestations of place attachment and environmental perception.

 

While this study presents a novel interpretation of environmental perception, the manuscript lacks crucial details and exhibits poor organization. Primarily, the absence of a methodology section raises questions about data collection methods, target population definition, the rationale behind analytical strategy selection, and the choice of explanatory variables. The study’s hypotheses and their derivation from existing literature are unclear, and a rigorous statistical model is needed to scrutinize the causal relationship between environmental perception and place attachment. Moreover, there is a disconnect between the theoretical and analytical sections. The data analysis does not seamlessly flow from the established theory. Additionally, the introductory part of the paper is overly extended and delves into themes unrelated to the research question, requiring condensation. Furthermore, the practical significance of the study needs better articulation, and a clear outline of steps for future research is warranted. A more in-depth discussion of the study’s findings is essential to enhance the paper’s overall quality.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

There are a few places where English can be significantly improved. Starting from line 34, make sure that every word is adequately translated into English: și=and, etc. 

Author Response

Thank you for taking the time to review this manuscript. We improved manuscript details and organization. We have introduced a methodological part (rows 219-260) where we have clarified many of your suggestions:

• We have argued the theoretical premises on the basis of which hypotheses about the link between environment perception and place attachment have been developed
• We have made clarifications about the bibliographical references used to develop the scales, we have presented new details about the form of the scales
• We believe that the approach related to the philosophical meanings of place attachment is an argument for the statistical multiple regression model consisting of the forms of manifestation of environment perception as independent variables and place attachment as dependent variable.

We also added lines 382-389; 399-401, where we clarified the connection between philosophy and research; or lines 618-620 where we insisted on the links between research and theory

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The basic idea of your research is of great interest and I believe it has the potential to contribute substantially to the scientific dialogue to strengthen place-based environmental awareness. Furthermore, the choice you make to approach the issue under investigation in an interdisciplinary manner is of great interest too.

However, I am afraid that there are minor and major weaknesses in the paper that need a deeper and more careful look to improve the presentation of the research. Below are some comments and suggestions you might consider for the improvement of the manuscript.

1. Some minor corrections:

-          You could replace "man" with "human".

-          No capitals are needed in terms like Place Attachment, Literature Review

 

2. You have devoted an entire section to approaching your key concept through philosophy. It is a very interesting approach that I agree with. However, I cannot detect any connection between this approach and your research hypotheses, your methodology and the variables measured. How does this choice connect with your empirical research?

3. The term “environmental perception” is not defined and explained. How is it approached? As environmental awareness, pro-environmental behaviour, environmental values or actions? It would be helpful if you could explain more and support it with literature from the field of environmental studies.

4. In the section of the methodology it is not clear how exactly you approach the evaluation through the questionnaire. It is not clear what the measurement scale is and what exactly is being measured. Furthermore, does the measurement scale come from the field of psychology? How does this all connect? Perhaps it would help to describe the measurement scale and the parameters more analytically.

5. Finally, the discussion and conclusion sections would have been better focused on your own research.

6. Especially, the discussion as it is now written seems to belong more to the results section.

Author Response

Thank you for taking the time to review this manuscript. According with your suggestions we improved manuscript details and organization.

1. We made the minor corrections that were suggested.
2. We have made further clarifications about the connection between philosophical approach and research hypotheses in lines 382-389; 399-401. Also we believe that the approach related to the philosophical meanings of place attachment is intended to complement the narrower perspective of the used statistical model.
3. We defined and explained environment perception on rows 155-169, 177-196, 197-218
4. We have introduced a methodological part (rows 219-260) where we have made clarifications about the bibliographical references used to develop the scales, we have presented new details about the form of the scales. We show that in the construction of the statistical model we were not interested in the personal or psychological dimension of the phenomenon of place attachment, but we studied people's opinion about the place dimension (the third dimension proposed by Scannell and Gifford).
5. Regarding the discussion and conclusion sections we added some information where we insisted on the links between research and theory (rows 618-620)
6. We wanted the relationship between the results and discussion sections to be one of continuity, so in the results section we intended the description of the model and the presentation of the results to predominate. In the discussion section, although we have included some results, they are there to support the interpretations.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

You have comprehensively addressed my concerns on the study's methodology. Overall, I am satisfaied withe the paper's quality.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The revised manuscript now provides a clear and detailed explanation of the research procedures, which will enable readers to fully understand and replicate the study. This is a significant improvement and meets the journal's expectations for high-quality research.

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Your suggestions have been useful to us.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I would like to thank the authors for the work they did on the comments and suggestions of the review. All the open questions were answered. I still find the main idea of the research very interesting. It would probably take more time to better present and document the idea and the process of the research. However, I appreciate the fact that the authors worked and responded to all the comments or expressed their positions and choices.

There is one point that is still not clear despite the author's corrections. The connection of the theoretical section where the key concept is approached through philosophy. Perhaps, it could be further connected and supported  in the section of the discussion. The philosophical approach to place attachment is very interesting. However, it is not clear how it connects to your own research.

Author Response

Thank you for taking the time to review this manuscript.

This time we have tried to bring better clarification to the connection of the philosophy approach with the sociological research. Thus we have introduced five new bibliographical references and in the discussion chapter we have added the following ideas (lines 539 - 573):

” First, we propose some more precise details about the role of philosophical analysis in the design of this study. First of all, we would like to point out that philosophical analysis is a methodological approach that derives from the field of knowledge developed by various authors under the name of "philosophy of social science" [40, 41, 42]. Specifying the philosophy of social science to our research subject we highlight some ideas:

1. Philosophical analysis covers important issues that could not be described by statistical analysis. One such situation is that place attachment analysis raises an ontological dispute in that this phenomenon exists outside the symbolic or cultural meanings that actors manifest. In simple terms people are usually not aware of feelings like place attachment or environment perception, they do not think about them, they do not use them in conversations. Yet they exist, and their consequences are decisive for behavioral pat-terns such as those based on proenvironment attitudes.
2. Sociological research covers a limited fraction of a very large phenomenon in terms of its social implications. Philosophical analysis supports sociological analysis. Thus, the etymological perspective offers knowledge at the historical level; philosophical analysis brings into question the role of church and faith in crystallizing place attachment; Heideggerian phenomenology emphasizes the emergence of meaning, as space is becoming place and house is becoming home; last but not least philosophical analysis argues the authors' choice to limit sociological study to rural communities.
3. From a methodological point of view, philosophical analysis contributed to the creation of the theoretical entities that we have used in the research. Philosophy of social sciences introduces an empiricist approach to social reality that promotes the construction of theoretical entities by means of "useful fictions" that subsequently allow scientific prediction by virtue of mathematical content. This type of approach is called "instrumentalism" [43]. It is precisely what has happened in this study by relating philosophical analysis to sociological interpretation. Theoretical entities were defined by the items of the scales and then placed in relation as independent variables that determine place attachment as a dependent variable.

Given that „a concept has a specific defining attributes because of its role in the theory”, a brief foray into the field of philosophy became necessary because „in the methodological literature, these philosophical questions are often called problems of „construct validity”. The main concept that we used in this study had many attributes and meanings, but all of them are kept under other names in sociology. And last, but not least, “real features of the world correspond to the theoretical concepts or constructs, and valid surveys (or other tests) can measure them”. [44]”